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Po Bronson is one of my favorite authors. I so remember The First $20M is the Hardest, published in 1997, right as I was joining Digital Insight. It captures the ethos of the late 1990s' boom clearly, and it is well worth a [re]read as a perfect snapshot of the time. Po has a new book out called What Should I Do With My Life, and it could have been called The Second $20M is Even Harder. This book (which I've ordered, but not yet read) tells the stories of fifty people who have rethought their life. One of the stories is about Mike Lanza, who founded 1View, which was bought by Digital Insight in 2000. Prior to that he founded Just In Time Solutions, now called Avolent, which was a key partner for Intuit when I was managing their online billpay business. Small world!
Printing living tissue. What will they think of next? Wow!
Condoleezza Rice: Why We Know Iraq is Lying.
Are you ready for some chess? The world's best human faces off against the world's best computer. This match features a grudge angle, in 1997 Deep Junior's "dad", Deep Blue, defeated Kasparov, marking the first time a computer had ever defeated the reigning world champion. (Interestingly, while Deep Blue was more powerful than Deep Junior [in terms of hardware and consequent depth of search capability], most chess experts feel Deep Junior plays "better" [more elegant] chess.)
Two Caltech astonomers have used the Hubble Telescope to locate the largest object in the solar system since Pluto was found 72 years ago. The proposed name of the icy ball is Quaoar ("Kwa-whar", catchy, huh?) Despite orbiting the Sun, this is not considered a 10th planet, rather a Kuiper Belt object (KBO). In fact the finders suggest that Quaoar proves Pluto is really a KBO also.
Halley posted some great jokes. Just remember, use a pun, go to jail. It's the law.
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